All Works Photo Tour. Gaudi & Barcelona Club.

Colonia Güell was a small workers' village, which was built in 1882, next to Mr. Güell's textile factory located near the town of Santa Coloma de Cervelló, in the Baix Llobregat region, about 20 km. from Barcelona. Güell, the future Count, planned for all kinds of services to be available to his factory employees, including a church. Gaudí was put in charge of building it, and he spent ten years working on studies for the design, and developing a new method of structural calculation based on a stereostatic model built with cords and small sacks of pellets.
The outline of the church was traced on a wooden board (1:10 scale), which was then placed on the ceiling of a small house next to the work site. Cords were hung from the points where columns were to be placed. Small sacks filled with pellets, weighing one ten-thousandth part of the weight the arches would have to support, were hung from each catenaric arch formed by the cords. Photographs were taken of the resulting model from various angles, and the exact shape of the church's structure was obtained by turning them upside-down. Gaudí took photographs from various angles so he could see vertical sections or elevations of the building.
In this church, Gaudí, enjoying total freedom in the design, confirmed the validity of the theories that would in the end define his own style. Here, we find construction systems that he later applied to his greatest work, the Sagrada Familia.
Work was stopped because of the death of Count Güell, in 1914.

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